


Best Halloween ever

by bunnysworld



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 18:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnysworld/pseuds/bunnysworld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Halloween and Percy gets to go trick-or-treating with his sister. But that doesn't go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Halloween ever

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even remember if this is betaed or not. If not, sorry....

Percy beamed. It was Halloween night and he was about to go trick-or-treating with his big sister, who had provided his costume. The wonderful light purple princess dress she had grown out of a couple of years back. Percy had admired it ever since he’d found it in the back of her closet. 

Their mom had laughed at him and their dad had been furious, but in the end, Luisa had insisted it wouldn’t make him a girl to wear a dress for a few hours and now they stood in front of their house. She was already in the pirate outfit she would wear to the party she’d attend after delivering him back home safe and sound. And Percy wore the dress and a little tiara and clutched his pumpkin-shaped bucket in his little hand. He’d never been so proud in all of his life. Maybe he’d even run into the boys of his playschool and they could admire his costume, too. They would probably even invite him to play with them. 

“Let’s go, Percy.”

He followed Luisa to the neighbours’ house and stood next to her when Mrs. Palmer opened the door. She admired his dress and gave him some candy when he said his ‘trick or treat’ shyly. 

Some of the neighbours told him that boys didn’t wear dresses and that he should dress up as a cowboy or an astronaut. He didn’t care, he wanted to wear this. He could still be a cowboy next year. He didn’t notice the strange looks some people threw him or the glares Luisa sent their way as they made their way down the street. 

At the corner, Luisa met her friend Tina and Percy got bored. Why did teenage girls always chat and chat and chat? 

“I’ll go to this house, okay?”

“Can you do it on your own?”

Percy nodded. How hard was it? You rang the doorbell, said “Trick or treat” and were handed some candy or apples or something other yummy. 

So he walked up the way to the house. It was different here. This house was a lot bigger than the other houses they’d been to. Percy threw an insecure look back at Luisa, but she was too busy laughing with her friend to notice him. 

There were scarecrow-monsters in the garden and scary jack-o-lanterns, fake cobwebs that looked creepily real and ghost-figures that lit up when you passed them. Percy stopped. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to approach this house. But he’d told Luisa he could do it, so he would.

His heart was beating wildly as he climbed the three steps to the door. Before he could even look around for a doorbell, the door opened with a scary screetching sound and an old man with longish white hair looked down at him. 

Percy just stared. 

And then saw the blond boy standing behind the old man. “That’s just Percy from my playschool class, Gaius. And look, he’s wearing a dress!”

Oh dear! The boy was Arthur Pendragon, the proud boy from his school. The boy Percy wanted to be like. Everyone admired Arthur with his blond hair and blue eyes and everything you ever could want. 

“Hi Arthur.”

Other boys shoved the door open and started to laugh. They were all clad in shiny knights’ outfits, wielding plastic swords. “He’s just a girl!” one of them yelled and the others laughed harder. 

Percy blushed and felt tears welling up. He liked the dress, but that didn’t mean he was a girl! 

“Be nice, boys. Your friends has as much right to be a princess tonight as you have being knights.” The old man put some candy in his pumpkin but all Percy saw was the boys he so desperately wanted to be friends with laughing at him. So he dropped the bucket, turned and ran. 

His foot caught in the seam of the dress and he almost fell, but managed to stay on his feet and ran down the path until he reached a bush that he could hide behind. 

Only then he allowed the tears to fall. Why were they so mean? They had lots of money for new costumes and of course Arthur would have the best, all shiny and fancy. He’d even worn a crown. 

Wrapping his arms around his knees, Percy dropped his head on his arms and sobbed. What if he liked the light purple of the dress? What was wrong with wearing it? 

He didn’t even hear that someone approached, the sound of little feet in the dry foliage drowned by his own sobs. 

“Here.”

Percy startled and looked up to find Merlin standing there, holding his little tiara out to him. 

“You lost that in the garden.”

After wiping his hand over his eyes, Percy reached for the plastic tiara. He sure wouldn’t wear it again, he didn’t want Merlin to laugh at him, too. Merlin usually was nice. 

The dark-haired boy, who was dressed in a dark blue wizard’s outfit and a black witches’ hat, sat down next to him. “They don’t mean it.”

“They do. They are mean.”

Merlin shook his head. “No, they’re not, they just don’t get things sometimes.” 

Percy didn’t know what things they didn’t understand, but he didn’t ask. 

“They laugh at me all the time. They’re all knights and I’m just a wizard.”

“Wizards are more powerful than knights. They can do magic.”

“They don’t get that.” 

“I will never wear a dress again.”

Merlin looked at him. “If you want to wear it, you should. My mom says we can be anything we want to be.” With that, he put his arm around Percy’s shoulder. 

They sat in silence until Merlin put the bucket Percy had dropped on Percy’s lap. 

“I lost all my candy.” Percy sniffed again, his good mood from before totally destroyed. 

Merlin got up. “I’ll go get mine, we can share!”

Percy was sure that Merlin wouldn’t come back and scrambled up when he heard Luisa calling for him. The dress was dirty and ripped and he was sure she’d scold him. But when he stepped back onto the sidewalk, she just dropped to her knees in front of him and hugged him and asked again and again what happened. 

“Where were you? I’ve been looking for you all over! Are you okay? I’m taking you home!”

He wasn’t in any mood to argue with his sister and he wanted to go home, get rid of the stupid dress and curl up in the blankie fort he’d built in the afternoon with Pookie, his dog.

Before they could leave, Merlin came running down the pathway. “Wait!”

Luisa was still busy wiping the tears off his face and Percy sniffed.

“Can Merlin come?” he asked in a low voice.

“Sure. We’ll call his mom to let her know where he is, okay?”

And so Percy wandered home, one of his hands in Luisa’s, the other clutching Merlin’s and an hour later, the boys sat in on the couch, watched ‘Finding Nemo’ and shared the candy from Merlin’s trick-or-treating. 

“You know,” Merlin said around a mouthful of orange popcorn, “this is the best Halloween ever.”


End file.
